On this week’s episode of AppStories, we start a series of episodes on the new and updated apps coming to iOS and macOS Catalina in the fall starting with Notes.
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With the dust settling from WWDC, the boys go through Apple’s major platforms and talk about what they are excited about seeing in these releases.
On last week’s episode of Connected, we went over our favorite announcements from WWDC. You can listen below (and find the show notes here).
Connected, Episode 247
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Last year around the time Adobe began detailing its forthcoming Photoshop for iPad, the company also shared word of another iPad app it was working on, then called Project Gemini. Today in a blog post, Scott Belsky of Adobe announced Adobe Fresco as the official name of the new drawing and painting app, and detailed one of the features that will make the new app special:
The result is Live Brushes, which use the artificial intelligence of Adobe Sensei to recreate the behavior of oils and watercolors in an amazingly lifelike way. When you paint with a watercolor Live Brush, you’ll see the color bloom into adjacent areas of the paper. Use red and yellow next to each other and they’ll naturally blend into orange at the border. You can even recreate painting with water to dilute some colors and encourage tints to mix.
With an oil Live Brush, you can slather on a thick coat of paint and see the ridges and brush strokes that give the painting dimension. And you can mix different oil colors together to create a varied swirl of color that no digital color wheel could ever provide.
Live Brushes can be seen in action in the video embedded below. Adobe’s aim with Fresco is to provide a tool that scales well in serving users who want a simple drawing tool to those who need the power of features like layers, masking, brush creation, and more. While it’s expected that Creative Cloud subscribers will receive full access to Fresco’s full feature set, Adobe seems to be considering its full spectrum of target users when it comes to pricing. In today’s announcement Belsky notes “anyone with the right hardware will be able to draw and paint in Fresco for free.”
No update was given on Fresco’s release date, other than that it remains “later this year.” With iPadOS 13, Fresco, Photoshop, and the iPad app improvements that are hopefully to come alongside Catalyst projects, it’s going to be an exciting end of the year for iPad.
The web is a visual medium, so it pays to make the most of what it has to offer with beautiful, interactive animations. With Tumult Hype Professional 4.0 for the Mac, you can create stunning animations without writing a single line of code.
The app uses a powerful key-based animation system combined with an easy-to-use record button that couldn’t be simpler. That’s because under the hood of Tumult Hype’s elegant UI is a sophisticated interactivity system that can trigger symbols and multiple timelines.
With the recent release of version 4.0, Tumult Hype introduced vector shapes with shape morphing for more advanced animations. You can also incorporate physics into animations, ease into and out of animations, bring line drawings to life, create snapshots to use with browsers where JavaScript is disabled, and use Hype with external editors and tools like BBEdit, Photoshop, Affinity Photo, and Astropad.
Tumult Hype’s visual environment the perfect way to create animations because it eliminates the guesswork letting you see exactly what the visitors to your site will see. Whether you’re building ads, which require a small export footprint, infographics, banners, animated lessons, interactive experiences, or books, Tumult Hype has you covered. Then when you’re finished, the app outputs state-of-the-art HTML5 and CSS3 driven by JavaScript, which is compatible with everything from IE 6 to the latest Chrome, iOS, and Android browsers.
To get started making responsive, flexible documents that accommodate all device layouts, download and try Tumult Hype today. For a limited time, MacStories readers can buy Tumult Hype Professional for 20% off on the Tumult store by using this link or the coupon code ‘MACSTORIES’ at checkout.
Our thanks to Tumult Hype Professional for supporting MacStories this week.
Before diving into the newly announced iPadOS 13 and its Files improvements, Ryan shares how he cheated on his challenge using a powerful new iPadOS feature.
In this week’s episode of Adapt, Ryan explains how he tackled my dictation challenge and we start discussing the changes in iPadOS. You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.
Adapt, Episode 3
We’ve got a lot of ground to cover with iPadOS and the new Shortcuts app on Adapt this summer, and it’s going to be a fun ride. Make sure to subscribe to the show using one of the links below so you’ll never miss an episode when it drops.
The strength of Soulver lies in its flexibility. Full-fledged spreadsheet apps like Numbers and Excel have their place. However, day-to-day life requires calculations that don’t demand that level of horsepower and benefit from contextualizing numbers with text. It’s the kind of math that happens in notebooks and on the back of envelopes. By combining elements of a text editor, spreadsheet, and plain English syntax, Soulver commits those easily-lost notebook scribblings to a format that allows for greater experimentation and easier sharing.
During WWDC last week, Acqualia Software released a major update to the app. Soulver 3 for Mac features an updated design and substantial new functionality that I love. The app has never been easier to use, and its implementation of a sidebar to corral sheets is fantastic.
However, unlike its predecessor, version 3‘s file format is incompatible with the iOS version of the app and earlier Mac versions. Soulver also saves its data as a single ‘sheetbook’ file now, which means it can no longer save or manage sheets as individual files saved to arbitrary locations on your Mac. Both changes will be problematic for some users who may want to wait for future updates that the app’s developer has said are in the works.
It’s been nearly seven years since Twitterrific 5 launched on the App Store, and so much about Twitter has changed since then. One major shift is the seismic increase in media shared on the platform; as our devices and data speeds have gotten faster, so too have the amount of GIFs, images, and videos we share online grown. While Twitterrific has certainly done its fair share of adapting for the times in previous updates, adding improved media controls and the like, today Twitterrific 6 introduces the most significant updates for the app’s media experience to date. There’s a new GIPHY integration, autoplaying videos and GIFs in the timeline, and a lot more. Added to that, users can now customize their Twitterrific experience in fresh ways thanks to additional themes, icons, and a new font.
Sarah Perez of TechCrunch has assembled an excellent, in-depth walkthrough answering key questions about how Apple’s upcoming authentication service, Sign In with Apple, will work:
From a security perspective, Apple offers a better option for both users and developers alike compared with other social login systems which, in the past, have been afflicted by massive security and privacy breaches.
Apple’s system also ships with features that benefit iOS app developers — like built-in two-factor authentication support, anti-fraud detection and the ability to offer a one-touch, frictionless means of entry into their app, among other things.
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Despite the advantages to the system, the news left many wondering how the new Sign In with Apple button would work, in practice, at a more detailed level. We’ve tried to answer some of the more burning and common questions.
Perez addresses questions regarding what information a developer receives when a user chooses Sign In with Apple, whether it’s possible to use the authentication service on Android devices, when an app will and won’t be required to use Sign In with Apple, and more.
Despite some controversy regarding how strongly Apple is pushing this new secure login option, if it works as advertised, Sign In with Apple could be one of the upcoming OS features that has the biggest societal impact in the long run.
When I published my Beyond the Tablet story a few weeks ago, I was optimistic we’d get a handful of iPad-related features and optimizations at WWDC. I did not, however, foresee an entire OS designed specifically around iPad. And the more I think about it, the more I see iPadOS as a sign of Apple’s willingness to break free from old assumptions and let the iPad be what it’s best at: a portable computer inspired by the Mac, but based on iOS.
